Haslam political ad: In a political ad three years ago, Gov. Bill Haslam touted his work with Pilot. Today, he won't say how much money he draws from the company.

Written by

Chas Sisk

The Tennessean

Haslam political ad: A 2010 ad showed photographs of Pilot stations — including one with Bill Haslam standing next to his brother, Jimmy, and a pump advertising 54-cent gasoline.

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Three years ago, Bill Haslam could not talk about the family business enough.

In the television ad that introduced Haslam to many Tennessee voters as a Republican candidate for governor, yellowed photographs of Pilot stations — including one with Haslam standing next to his brother, Jimmy, and a pump advertising 54-cent gasoline — rolled past the screen. A narrator introduced the soon-to-be governor as a man who helped build Pilot Travel Centers into the nation’s biggest truck stop chain.

“Working to help his family’s business grow, he spent most of his life on the road,” the ad boasted in the clipped style that became the campaign’s signature. “Handshake to handshake.”

Voters in Tennessee probably will not see many references to Pilot from the Haslam campaign when he runs for a second term next year.

As buzz about Haslam’s prospects nationally begins to build, the company that helped lift him to the top job in Tennessee government now could become a political liability. Whether it is enough to weigh the popular governor down is uncertain.

“The problems are his brother’s, mainly, and the governor himself didn’t do anything,” said Roy Neel, a former adviser to Vice President Al Gore. “If it becomes something where people are convicted and go to jail, then you’ve got a problem just by name association.”

It is already clear that the FBI investigation into allegations that Pilot salesmen bilked customers out of millions in rebates has tarnished the sterling reputation of Pilot, the company Haslam’s father started and which remains closely tied to the family.

An affidavit released last week suggests top officials, including Jimmy Haslam III, may have been aware of wrongdoing. The governor’s older brother didn’t broach that issue when he told reporters Monday that he was “embarrassed” by the allegations, that the company had put sales staffers on leave and that it had hired an outside investigator. He took no questions.

Poised for big stage

No one has alleged involvement by the governor himself. Bill Haslam stepped down from the company a decade ago to pursue his political career, and he remains a shareholder. The governor hasn’t spelled out how much involvement he has had with Pilot, and still won’t say how much money he draws from the company, but he said last week that it had been 25 years since he made a sales call on Pilot’s behalf. He also said he hasn’t served on the board for the past decade.

But for a politician poised to place himself on the national stage — the subject of a laudatory profile by the Washington insider publication Politico less than three months ago — the investigation could set back his career nonetheless.

The Republican governor may have seen himself eliminated, before the race has even started, as a potential vice presidential nominee in 2016. He also loses an aspect of his biography that could have made him appealing to many GOP voters, that he had helped create an iconic company found along America’s highways.

Pilot’s rise from a single, small-town gas station to the nation’s sixth-largest private company had represented a dream narrative for an up-and-coming politician.

Pilot redefined the truck stop business by combining cheap gas with consumer-friendly franchises that made its service stations appealing to truckers and families alike. The Haslam campaign boasted in that initial ad that Pilot had created 11,000 jobs nationwide.

Haslam, who cast himself as a businessman as well as a political executive, will not be able to trade smoothly on Pilot’s good name any more. The FBI says Pilot salesmen deliberately deceived customers by telling them they were owed smaller rebates than they’d been promised.

The FBI quotes sales executives describing how they cheated individual companies out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. In one instance, a top executive was asked by a customer to pay off the debt on an airplane after getting caught. The incident became a recurring joke for Pilot executives.

David Smith, a spokesman for Haslam, said voters will set the allegations aside.

“The governor believes Tennesseans are going to vote on what he has done as governor,” said Smith, “and he has and will continue to focus on job growth, improving education and managing the state conservatively.”

Bad timing

The allegations come at an inopportune time for Gov. Haslam. He’s ramping up his bid for a second term, and he has taken on a prominent role in the National Governors Association.

The latter led Politico to write in February that Haslam is “the GOP star you’ve never heard of,” a strong conservative who avoids bombast. The publication quoted Victor Ashe, a former Knoxville mayor and ambassador under President George W. Bush, suggesting that Haslam could run for president and should be considered as a running mate in 2016.

The article had a boosterish feel. But it also pointed out some of Haslam’s strengths on a presidential ticket.

The governor may lack the fiery style or public relations machinery of better-known GOP hopefuls like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie or Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

But he does have a conservative record and an even-keeled demeanor, which could make him an intriguing selection for one of those candidates were they to secure the nomination. Those prospects could be diminished by the questions now surrounding Pilot.

“The prospective nominee puts a higher standard on the vice presidential nominee than he does on himself,” Neel said. “You don’t want the vice presidential candidate to be a distraction, and what’s a distraction is something that is unearthed in your background. ... That’s why people in business just don’t end up as vice presidential candidates, for the most part.”

Neel said the allegations are less likely to damage Haslam in a presidential campaign, when the governor would have more control over how he is presented to voters. Other observers agreed.

Chip Saltsman, a Republican strategist who served as campaign manager to Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign, said primary voters tend to be more interested in candidates’ record in office than their background.

“That’s a pretty big stretch to attach that (the Pilot allegations) to him,” Saltsman said. “Some of it depends on what happens, but I still think for him, it’s about what he does as governor.”

John Geer, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University who specializes in negative advertising, likewise said Haslam’s record as governor would be paramount. But he added that Haslam might be tarred by some of his fellow Tennessee Republicans.

“If Governor Haslam’s going to have a problem on the national stage,” Geer said, “it’s going to be to explain some of the bills that have come out of the state legislature that are more conservative than voters in New Hampshire or Iowa might like.”

But if Haslam were to ever make a bid for the White House, it probably would not be until 2020 or later. Between now and then, his fortunes are likely to rise and fall a number of times.